New Madrid shake in SE Illinois?

At the time of the earthquake, in November, 1811, Mr. [Yearby] Land was a boy past nine years old; but the happening of that four or five months shaking made an impression on his mind that was clear and bright when he was ninety years old. He said the ground would shake and then rock and roll in long waves. After a short quiet spell, there would be another shock and roll.

His father had a clearing in the woods and just on the south edge of what is known as Big Prairie. In this woodland, extending southward to the hills on the Little Wabash, were white oak trees of wondrous size. There was rarely any undergrowth. This primeval forest was like a well kept park. I remember those trees.

I mention this timber to give point to Mr. Land's narrative. He said in these long continued rollings, the tall timber would weave their tops together, interlock their branches, then part and fly back the other way, and when they did this "the blossom ends of the limbs would pop like whip lashes; and the ground was covered with broken stuff."

In the prairie, about two miles east of his father's house, a big crack was made in the ground, and you could not see to the bottom of it. The ground on the south of the creek sunk down about two feet. "This crack" was on the land afterward owned by Mr. Jacob Parker on the N. W. Qr. of Sec. 35, T, 5, S. R. 10 E 3d p. m.

It was well defined when I first saw the place in 1858. Across a field that sloped slightly upward to the north, was a well marked line of uplift of downfall. The lower side to the south. This line extended east and west. It started on some high ground, west of the field, extended eastward through the woodland and was lost in some swampland further on. It could be traced about two miles. The field was in cultivation for wheat when I first saw it, and the slope of the uplift, or northern side, was about six feet long, as it had been worked down in cultivation.

South and eastward from this farm was a wide extent of low, flat, untimbered land, extending to the Marshall Hills, on the Big Wabash, eastward, and nearly to the Little Wabash southward. In those days this land was not overflowed by the Big Wabash. It was covered by a verdurous growth of grasses and was a splendid summer and winter range, or pasture for horses, cattle and swine.

There were many square miles of this level plain, and over it, in the earthquake time, piles and piles of pure, snow white sand were heaved up. In the words of Uncle Yearby Land, as we called him, those piles "were from the size of a bee-gum too three or four wagon loads."

To understand this, you will have to know what a "bee-gum" was. It was a section about twenty inches long, cut from a hollow gum log about fourteen or eighteen inches in diameter. It was placed, with many others of its kind, open end down on a raised platform of split logs. The top end was closed in with riven clapboards weighted down with stones; or pinned down with wooden pegs. In these, vast swarms of bees, unvexed by moth or other enemy of civilization, stored their honey, which was a splendid substitute for the sugar and molasses of later times.

This sand was so white and clean that, in the words of mr. Land, "it would not stain or soil the whitest linen." These piles of sand showed us evidence of water. The sand remained in piles until washed down by succeeding rains.

In this shaking and rolling of the earth, from November until the following March, no buildings were damaged and only one person hurt.

as told by Daniel Berry
http://www.iltrails.org/1811il.htm